The Circle Keepers

The Circle Keepers train youth as restorative justice practitioners, researchers, and artists-activists, that advocate for desegregation, equity and youth voice in schools. Circle Up! Youth Restorative Justice Arts, DBA The Circle Keepers started in 2017 as a volunteer-run after school program for high school students to learn restorative justice practices like peer mediation protocols, conflict resolution circles and community building activities as well as to hone their leadership skills, engage in political education, civic participation and produce community service/social justice projects and thus, create change in their school and in their neighborhoods. We stand affirmed in the words of Toni Cade Bambara, that: “The role of the [artivist] is to make the revolution irresistible!” The 6 VALUES that drive our work are: Voice, Agency, Love, Unity, Experience, & Solidarity. These values are not metaphors; they inform how we orient ourselves in our communities as individuals, primarily amongst ourselves as a youth-led-adult supported organization, and with our membership and partners as a whole. We deeply believe that youth voices must be at the center of every endeavor that aims to serve them. Based on the Disability movement’s motto of “nothing about us without us”, we aim to not only listen to youth voices, but center and cherish them. Agency to us means that we must birth, foster and sustain spaces for all of our members to truly feel empowered to practice their own agency, free will, and self determination in ways that are in service of our shared mission as an organization. We view love, as Dr. King taught us; all which stands in the way of justice. Similarly, we are rooted in bell hook’s call for us to treat love as an action, which takes trust, commitment, patience, and care. Given the intersectional nature of oppression, we understand that unity and solidarity must go hand in hand in the pursuit of peace, justice, safety and belonging.